“The Invisible Embrace BEAUTY” by John O’Donohue

In
beauty we were dreamed and created, and offered a life in a world where beauty
arises to awaken, surprise and call us. The outer unfolding of our lives is
internally sustained and ordered by this invisible beauty. Furthermore,
whenever we awaken beauty we are helping to make God present in the world.
Consequently the rituals and the liturgies of religion can be occasions where
beauty truly comes alive. The beauty of God is reachable for everyone and can
be awakened in all dimensions of our experience. This also calls us to love and
respect the world and to care for our earth.

Thomas
Aquinas and the medieval thinkers wisely recognized that beauty was at the
heart of reality. Unity, Goodness and
Presence came together. Without beauty they would be separated and inclined
towards destructive conflict with each other. Accompanied by beauty, truth
gains graciousness and compassion. Beauty holds harmony at the heart of Unity
and prevents its collapse into the most haunted chaos. In the presence of
beauty, goodness attracts desire and beauty makes Presence luminous and evokes
it’s mystery. There is a profound
equality at the heart of beauty; the graciousness which recognizes and
encourages the call of individuality but invites it to serve the dream and
creative vision of community.

For
Plato beauty was not a private experience of self indulgence or pleasure.
Beauty was internally related to love and goodness. The basic human drive is
the desire for the good. In the beginning love was born of beauty. Plato understands love as a spirit that works
on that threshold between the divine and the mortal. To be is to become
creative and bring forth the beautiful.

Beauty
is the goddess of birth. In her presence the passion and inner fullness of the
gift flows fourth in confidence and sureness.
And it is through love that we reach a deeper perception of the true
nature of beauty. In the Phaedrus,
Plato has that remarkable passage where he describes how the soul awakens in
the presence of beauty and recovers and grows her eternal wings; gravity and
finitude can no longer contain her. According to Plato beauty encourages and
invites creativity to unfold. When the
soul reaches beyond all fragmentation and entanglement God will come to birth
in it.